I connected to the report server with the intention of firing up Report Server Configuration Manager to check the execution account… When I got there, the Reporting Services Configuration Manager execution account was missing. It didn’t seem to be installed although the Reporting Services was running.

I spoke to the system administrator for the server. They were not SQL Server nor SSRS people and said, they had not set or configured the server, it was done by a third party. I spoke to the third party who said that they had not done anything untoward to the server. They pointed me at another server that they had installed previously. This had Reporting Services Configuration Manager Installed.

I thought a simple solution would be to connect remotely from the server where Reporting Services Configuration Manager was installed and Connect to the instance where Reporting Services Configuration Manager was missing. I attempted to do this from the server that had Reporting Services Configuration Manager installed, but when I attempted to connect I got a WMI permissions error.

To get around this and not wanting to get involved in whatever was stopping me from connecting remotely, I decided to work out what I needed to copy to the server with what Reporting Services Configuration Manager was missing so it could work.

Beginning from the apps pane:

I right-clicked on Reporting Services Configuration Manager and selected open File Location.

Examining that folder on the server on both, I could see that the server with the missing configuration tool didn’t have a shortcut to the SSRS Configuration Manager; so I copied the shortcut to the same location on the server with it missing.

When I examined that location on the server with Reporting Services Configuration Manager, the .exe was missing too. Next, I copied that across the server, and the tool ran just fine.

As a result, I was able to connect to SSRS and update an expired password on the execution account.

To Conclude:

I haven’t encountered a missing Reporting Services Configuration Manager before. My google searches didn’t show anyone experiencing the same problem either. I have looked at the installing options and I don’t think there is an option in there to not install the configuration manager when installing SSRS. I can only assume that an unknown person had removed configuration manager deliberately. Perhaps in a bid to reduce the surface area of SQL Server on that server.